


A Resurrection

by everybodylies



Category: Chicago Fire
Genre: AU, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 00:05:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1667417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everybodylies/pseuds/everybodylies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Rebecca Jones is still alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Resurrection

**Author's Note:**

> RIP Jones. I hardly even liked you when you were alive, but you still deserved better than what you got.

She plays the part well. Paramedic training had included some basic psychology, and she knows about the avoidance, about the five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The anger comes to her easy because it's real.

She puts up half of the suicide note in her locker so people stop asking questions. The other half she keeps stashed in her box of tampons under the sink. Sometimes, when things get too hard, when she has an encounter with Jones the elder, when a local middle school visits the firehouse, and she meets a young girl with a fierce determination and familiar ponytail, she sends Matt out for some more milk, and she takes the slip of paper out of the pink box and reads it over and over until her heart stops racing. It reads:

 

P.S. I trust you.  
Rocky's Bar in Miami. 3pm, six months from now.

 

Of course, maybe the note doesn't mean what she thinks it means. Maybe Jones just has some bizarre posthumous event planned, like in P.S. I Love You. But Dawson is pretty certain. She knows Jones. They'd met a mere three months ago, but it wasn't hard to know a person like Jones. The woman only had one thing on her mind. 

When the six month mark rolls around, she considers making up something about family in Miami but decides she's tired of lying to Matt. 

"I have to go to Miami for a few days, and I can't tell you why. It has nothing to do with you or me, and you don't have to worry about it. And I promise I'll tell you everything when I get back." 

Matt crosses his arms and attempts to look stern, but he'd long ago learned that she usually got what she wanted. "As long as you're staying safe," he sighs. 

She smiles, kisses him, and she's off. While on her three-hour flight, she realizes how much money she's wasting on this whole ordeal and gets angry again. She's still angry at 3pm when she's sitting in a booth at Rocky's Bar, nursing a beer and watching old retirees get drunk off their asses. 

Then Jones slides into the seat across from her, alive, so brilliantly alive, and wearing a blue MFD jacket. And she's grinning. 

"Hey, Dawson." 

Dawson's breath catches in her throat. She doesn't reach for her, doesn't smile, doesn't even say anything back. She only stares. They were never friends. No, she and Shay were friends. She and Jones were like… comrades-in-arms. She'd defend Jones to death when the men were being sexist, but that didn't mean they'd be chumming it up in their free time. 

"I got a friend who works in the morgue," Jones continues, to fill in the silence. She switched some records around for me. And I have a friend who can make fake identities. And, tah-dah, here I am, Rebecca Johannes, new name, new home, new job."

Maybe they could have been friends, eventually. Dawson would pass the firefighter's exam and become a candidate at another firehouse; competition would finally stop souring their relationship. Girls' nights out would have been so much more fun with a third member. It could have been great. But now? Dawson has no idea. 

"I'm not going to apologize," Jones says, a little testily. "I did what I had to." 

"Fifty-one went through a lot of shit after what happened. Mills almost got kicked out of the firehouse. Hermann still hasn't forgiven himself." 

"I had no choice."

"Mm, no, I think you did." 

"Come on, Dawson. Don't you remember? I was the woman who studied for days for that written exam, and then cheated anyway because I wanted it so bad." 

Dawson squints at Jones' face. Her eyes are bright, and her lips are twitching, holding back a smile. "You're happy." 

Jones loses self-control, and her mouth crashes into a grin once again. "Yeah, I am."

And it's hard to stay angry. How could she be mad at Jones? Jones, who'd done what she thought she had to, who finally got everything she'd ever wanted. She'd made it. Sure, it was selfish of her, but sometimes you had to be selfish in a world like this.

"Did you have to take the firefighter's exam again?" Dawson asks.

"Yeah. Passed it, too." Jones pauses. "You?" 

And now Dawson's smiling, too. "Yeah." 

They grin and laugh and even tear up a little together, and Jones reaches over to grab Dawson's hand. Dawson knows she has the right to hold a grudge, but, god, it feels so much better to just let it go; the beer tastes sweeter, the dusty sunlight hitting her skin feels warmer, and she can't wait to get back to Chicago and tell Hermann and Mills and everyone else and watch them finally stop hating themselves. 

Jones made it. And so has Dawson. Everything's going to be okay.


End file.
